Why does the Dutch government have totally no backup system in case 112 is not reachable due to a malfunction?

It strikes me that many reactions to this (and not only on this medium, but certainly also in the national media) are based on total ignorance and ignorance.
This is also reflected in the question: why the Government does not have a backup SYSTEM.System suggests as if something has to be automated initiated. Let’s be real here: The government does not have to have a system, but must have defined procedures (human actions) that need to be followed in case something similar arises. The reason not to make this happen by a system is precisely because the cause of the failure is in the system.

For example, KPN has three backup systems.None of them handle the right way. The reason is that systems, including backup systems, communicate with each other about the status and, based on predefined properties of that status, are automatically decided whether a backup system will enter into force or not. As everyone should know, there are never any possible parameters (there are infinitely many, and systems now have the property with limited amounts of parameters to be able to work) in these decision trees. By definition, there are always situations that are not foreseen and thus no adequeate backup systems in operation or in the right way are taken into operation. 100% availability is an unaccomplished utopia. In addition, the more (different) backup systems, and that is also the case if you were to use other providers as a backup system besides KPN, the more complex the environment becomes. And that is also the more complex the environment, the greater the likelihood of an unforeseen circumstance.

So I want to say that backup systems are not the solution to the problem, but rather the problem will increase.What does help is better monitoring and adequate procedures for national and local authorities, such as direct a correct EN-Alert message, and launching information services on displays that can be found almost everywhere nowadays. And if there really is a critical situation, steer the sound car through the streets.

And let’s be: 112 has three hours out of it in 7 years time.That is an availability of 99.995%, for anyone who has a little understanding of the highest possible availability that can be achieved with automated systems.

Finally, I think the fuss is still exaggerated.I have lived for over forty years without the prevalence of 112 or mobile phones. Then we could also save ourselves in emergencies. Only then we had local numbers for firefighters, cops, ambulance cars etc. As a backup for 112 per region, it seems to me most useful to make a local number available again (at providers other than KPN), who are routed to the 112 power stations via their own closed government network. If 112 is out, and that can and will certainly happen again, you can always make a notification via the local emergency number (e.g. 010/020/030 etc seven times seven or so).

Because in this particular case the mobile network of KPN was also flat and KPN subscribers could not call or receive calls and were not given a NL-Alert and so no 112 could call, and the breakdown of mobile networks is also something that can and will happen , it is also an option, just as we used to have fire detectors in neighbourhoods, in neighbourhoods (eg in lampposts already connected to a network) to make emergency detectors so that even if the mobile (and fixed) telephone network is out, you via this emergency alarm Can still connect to it.The question then is: what does that cost and are at all in relation to the impact of not being available from 112 or mobile network in 0.005% of the time. I think the answer will be no.

The Dutch government has outsourced 112 to KPN.KPN has rolled out a software update at the same time on the live system and the two backups, which therefore all three stopped working.

The questions that should be asked is whether it is useful that such an important thing as 112 is outsourced to only one commercial company.I also wonder whether it should be outsourced at all.

A very good question, which only makes for more questions…

When yesterday a colleague next to me said that 112 was not reachable because of a KPN malfunction, I looked at him sheepishly.If 112 wasn’t to be reached, then we all had to know it all massively now?

And that was exactly the problem.

More than an hour (!) later I got a hard alarming message (NL-Alert) from my phone at the station that 112 was not reachable.Several travellers were given this message at the same time, which caused the whole platform to be shocked.

In the train I got two more times this post.Other travelers got this post too, but again at times other than the rest. Some received the message more frequently than the remainder and the other not at all. Those random hard alarming noises were incredibly annoying. Everyone was always shocked.

I was with my mother and she was not at all aware of the malfunction.No NL-Alert, nothing… She received her first message about three quarters later.

What struck me was the huge chaos surrounding the malfunction.

Alternative phone numbers were shared on social media.These phone numbers were different in every city. Sometimes a 06 number, sometimes just a city number, but there was also just a nationwide number active. Very confusing. A song was even shared which appeared to be the number of the Telegraph editorial afterwards. How then?

I wonder if everyone has been reached during this failure and what its consequences have been.

In addition, the malfunction lasted far too long.

Come back to your question.I read that there were back-ups, but all of them weren’t working during the outage. Hopefully soon We’ll hear how this can take place…

Apparently there were three backups that didn’t worked[1.

But yeah that doesn’t say much yet.If the back-ups were technically in the same way as the main line, you can have 600. On the other hand, I can assume that the system has been taken into account.

However, if you do not need it there is a danger that you are not really looking at it.Is that bad, maybe, it’s human.. Yes!

Research will take place and I hope to find out more about it.But that there was totally no backup was not entirely correct


[1 Minister: Three back-ups for KPN’s telephony network were not working

In principle telephony systems have a reliability of 99.999%.

If the story is now that there were 3 backups that went for the same reason, I can only imagine that they are all of the same type,

If so, that is a big miss from KPN because you want to have 2 suppliers for essential systems for these types of cases.

Perhaps the wrong cut has been applied here?

No idea, surprised me also tremendously.As a police, how can you rely on a commercial party blind?

In 2012, there was also a malfunction and then they didn’t know how to react.That did something better now. The replacement 112 number could have been easier (was now a 10 digit number). But one kind of back up provider is apparently never set.

I think there were 2 backup systems!But those were Kopione’s main system so what first system dropped crashing then dropped the other two also crashing. Was better if the backup systems had really been loose with wellicjt other intisification?

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